BY SIFISO NHLABATSI
MBABANE- Prime Minister Russell Mmiso Dlamini says Africa should not be forced into choosing between fossil fuels and renewable energy, arguing that the continent must use its existing resources to finance a realistic transition towards cleaner energy systems.
The Prime Minister made the remarks while addressing the Africa Oil Week (AOW) Energy Summit in Accra, Ghana, under the theme “The Era of Indigenous Operators: Technology, Capital and the Future of African Energy Leadership”.
The Prime Minister acknowledged the environmental costs associated with oil, gas and coal, as well as the need for an energy transition.
However, he said fossil fuels remained strategically important to Africa’s energy security and economic development.
He noted that oil, gas and coal continued to underpin global transport, industry, power generation and government revenues, while many African countries still possessed significant hydrocarbon and coal resources.
The Prime Minister said African states should retain the sovereign space to develop these resources where commercially viable and responsibly managed.
At the same time, he stressed that their development should take place alongside a deliberate transition towards cleaner energy systems.
“The choice is not between fossil fuels or renewables. It is the intelligent use of today’s resources to finance tomorrow’s systems,” he said.
The Prime Minister said Africa should avoid repeating a cycle in which natural resources were extracted, exported without processing, revenues were consumed and countries remained dependent on imported goods and technology.
He said revenues generated from fossil fuels should instead be used to build the foundations of long-term economic transformation.
According to Dlamini, fossil-fuel revenues could finance renewable generation, industrial infrastructure and African enterprises.
He said resource development should also be undertaken responsibly, with efforts to reduce flaring and emissions while building indigenous capabilities across the energy value chain.
The objective, he said, should be to turn revenues from finite resources into capital capable of supporting a more diversified and sustainable economy.
Dlamini argued that Africa’s energy transition could not be divorced from the continent’s development needs.
He said Africa had contributed the least to the accumulation of greenhouse gases but remained among the regions most exposed to the consequences of climate change.
Extreme weather events, including droughts, floods, storms and extreme heat, were already placing pressure on communities and economies.
The Prime Minister said Africa therefore needed access to energy and technology to strengthen its resilience.
He called on industrialised nations to honour long-standing commitments on climate finance and technology transfer.
However, he cautioned that Africa would be unwise to base its survival entirely on promises from outside the continent.
“We must demand climate justice while preparing to save ourselves,” he said.
Dlamini said Africa’s transition must be environmentally responsible, economically just and technologically realistic.
Climate responsibility, he argued, should not become a prohibition on Africa’s development.
He maintained that energy policy should ultimately support industrialisation, arguing that the continent could not transform its economies without abundant, reliable and competitively priced electricity.
Africa, he said, needed a diversified energy mix that included solar, hydro, wind, geothermal, biomass and storage, alongside reliable baseload capacity.
The Prime Minister’s position places energy transition within a broader development strategy in which existing resources are used to finance future systems rather than simply being consumed.
He said Africa needed to ensure that its natural wealth became a foundation for technological capability, industrialisation and greater economic independence.
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(Courtesy Pic)
